Tuesday Structured Recovery Evenings are suspended until 12th September 2017

Overcoming Fear of Natural Phenomena

Including Wind, Thunder & Lightning

Phobias are very common - experts believe that one person in ten is
affected by a phobia at some time in their life - and fear of natural phenomena like
darkness, wind, storms, and especially thunder and lightning, are very common from the
adolescent years onwards.

Because there is an obvious common link between these phobias, we have
dealt with them together, with some comments on the specific conditions separately.

WHAT EXACTLY IS A PHOBIA?

Phobias are fears. Fear is a normal part of life, and there are many
things in life which can be dangerous or painful - including gale-force winds, or being
struck by lightning.

Most people experience a certain level of sensible anxiety
in really extreme weather conditions, or when they have to visit a dangerous area in
darkness. Sensible anxiety like this just reminds us to take precautions in
situations that are genuinely dangerous, and most people would do so.

It is natural to feel anxious when such situations arise, and in this
sense, anxiety is very useful. It warns you when danger is threatening. Fear (which we can
think of as severe anxiety) can also be useful. When we find ourselves in a situation of
real danger - such as being faced by a robber in a dark alley - the fear reaction is just
what we need.

It releases adrenaline and other chemicals into our blood, and these
speed up our heart-beat, sharpen our senses and heighten our physical powers. These
changes prepare us for what is called flight or fight - either to fight for
our lives, or to run for them.

A phobia is a disorder in which the body reacts in exactly the same
way, and we experience exactly the same feelings of fear - but in situations where
flight or fight is quite inappropriate. For example, thunder makes a loud
noise, but it is in itself completely harmless. Even the risk from lightning and
hurricanes, which are potentially dangerous, is extremely small. Nevertheless,
in a phobia, it is as if our body and mind has lost all sense of proportion, and sets up
an uncontrollable internal scream of Danger! Danger! Hide! Hide! whenever the
feared situation looms.

When the fear reaction is as strong as this, even a forecast of
unsettled weather or the thought of dusk approaching can feel like a serious
and imminent threat to life and limb. People with phobias usually realise all too well
that their reaction is irrational, but this makes no difference to its effect. Of
course, normal people find this very difficult to understand.

But phobias aren't just severe anxiety: the anxiety is turned
into a phobia by avoidance.

In the early stages of a phobia, people affected sometimes try to
tackle their fears head on by forcing themselves to go into the feared situation. If they
succeed in staying there, the phobia can be overcome quite quickly. Unfortunately, these
brief ventures usually end in a hasty retreat when the anxiety starts to rise. Because
this avoidance brings a reduction of the tension, it rapidly becomes a habit. The next
attempt then becomes more difficult, and so on until the attempts to face the problem stop
altogether. Avoiding the situations where we feel frightened makes us more sensitive to
those situations, and conditions us to fear them even more.

Avoidance is like retreating from an enemy. We may feel safer to begin
with, but we're letting the enemy get us on the run. This is why phobias can be such a big
problem. Because we tend to avoid the things we fear, the fear can worsen very rapidly.
And we have to retreat further and further, until we find that our ability to live a
normal life has been drastically reduced. In the case of unavoidable phenomena like rough
weather, we can soon be left with nowhere at all to hide. To recover, we need to put that
process into reverse.

WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF PHOBIA?

The phobias dealt with in this leaflet can produce all the unpleasant
physical symptoms of normal fear:

heart palpitations

feeling sick

chest pains

difficulty breathing

dizziness

jelly legs

feeling unreal

intense sweating

feeling faint

dry throat

restricted or fuzzy vision or hearing.

In severe cases, people may feel certain that they are about to die, go
mad, or lose control of themselves and injure someone, or do something disgusting and
humiliating. Most of all they feel an overpowering urge to escape from the
situation they are in. They also develop an acute fear of repeating these very unpleasant
experiences, and this is what really creates the phobia.

The level of symptoms experienced by people with phobias about natural
phenomena varies a great deal, from gnawing anxiety to very severe panic and terror.

Of course, these are only feelings. Even the worst panic attacks do not
cause any long-term ill-effects; people who panic simply do not die, go mad, or cause
mayhem as a result. In fact these frightening symptoms are exactly the same thing that
normal people feel in situations that really are dangerous. Soldiers in a
battle feel exactly that way. The only thing different about a phobia, is that the fear is
wildly out of proportion to the danger.

WHAT CAUSES THESE PHOBIAS?

It's hard to be precise, though sometimes an unpleasant experience may
be the trigger.

Old wives tales' may also play a role, especially in the
case of wind and storms. Parents or grandparents who become alarmed at the approach of
thunder, and unplug the TV and put the cutlery away, are bound to influence young minds.

Apart from these examples, while it may be interesting to know the
cause of a phobia, it isn't vital. The phobia is just one possible form that
underlying anxiety can take. The reasons why it has become focused on lightning, or wind
may be quite accidental. A run of unpleasant life events such as illness,
death of a close relative, marriage break-up, losing a job or bad depression may be the
real culprit.

It is not generally worth spending a lot of time and energy on
rooting out the cause. The point is to learn to control the phobia.

HOW CAN I OVERCOME MY PHOBIA?

People with phobias have become conditioned to produce the
fear reaction in situations which aren't really dangerous at all. The best way to counter
this is by de-conditioning: training themselves to react correctly.

This is done by gradually exposing themselves to the things they fear,
and experiencing the fears without running away, and so becoming less sensitive to them.

The idea is simple, but it calls for a fair amount of courage and
determination. The help of family and friends can make self-treatment much easier to
manage, and this is also why many people prefer to join a self-help group where they can
get support from people in a similar situation.

Anyone who decides to try desensitisation needs to draw up a personal
training programme. This means working out what they can do now, deciding what
they want to be able to do at the end, and fitting as many gradual exposure
steps in between as they need. The first step can be as simple as staying in a situation
that can just be managed now, but for a little longer than before.

Obviously phobias can vary a great deal. However, here are some
suggestions for how desensitisation could be handled.

Fear of wind, thunder and lightning

The levels of anxiety in individuals are so different that it is not
possible to offer a single series of exposure steps for all cases. Some wind and storm
phobics just experience a good deal of anxiety when high winds threaten, while others
spend most of the day listening to weather forecasts, phoning the meteorological offices,
or organising companions to look after them when bad weather threatens. However, these
suggestions would be worth considering for someone with a serious wind phobia:

Cut down on the number of calls to Met. Offices; or on reading or
listening to weather forecasts

Listen to sound effects records of wind and storms, including thunder

Watch videos of storms

If you hide, try to reduce the amount of protection you use, for
example using a smaller blanket, or leaving the cupboard door open a crack

If you seek companions, try to have them simply available at the end
of an open phone line, rather than actually in the house. (If you fear wires
and electricity this may be difficult, in which case it should not be an
early step.)

Work up to not hiding, but with a companion present

Then to not hiding, with no companion there

Then to observing high winds or lightning etc. with a companion

Then to doing so alone.

You can of course join this list at any point, or make up your own list
with smaller steps.

SOME HINTS FOR SELF-EXPOSURE WORK

The first step can be very simple - perhaps staying in a situation
that can just be managed now, but for a little longer than before.

The steps can be as large or as small as necessary, and big steps can
be broken down into smaller ones. However, it is important to make sure that each step
challenges the anxiety a little more than the last.

Don't be overwhelmed by the size of the task. As a rule, the steps
become steadily easier as you work through them.

Don't expect to be completely free from anxiety before you leave each
step and go onto the next - it will go completely in its own time as you progress.

If it is possible to find someone to work with, who can talk to you
calmly and positively while you are doing the steps (not over-sympathising or endlessly
asking how bad you are feeling) this can help.

When the work becomes hard, remind yourself that running away from
the phobic situation keeps you phobic, while holding on through the anxiety that it brings
helps to break the phobia down.

Relaxation techniques can be helpful in tackling the next step, and
it is easy to practice relaxation in the privacy of your own home.

If the steps you have chosen prove impossible, or if you are
depressed or have other severe anxiety problems, then professional help from a clinical
psychologist or psychiatrist may be needed. You can reach such professionals through your
GP; and in any case we recommend that you contact your GP and talk to him or her about
your disorder.

PANIC ATTACKS

Typically, people who are having a panic attack feel that they are
about to have a heart attack, or go mad, or lose control of their bowels, or run amok and
injure themselves and others. The urge to prevent this happening produces a powerful
desire to escape from the situation immediately.

In reality, the imagined horrors do not occur. People simply do not
have heart attacks, strokes, or brain haemorrhages, or go mad as a result of a panic
attack. Nor do they collapse or have fits. The worst that can happen is that
they feel faint or dizzy and have to sit down.

The boring truth about panic is that although it feels dreadful at the
time, and although the overdose of adrenaline and other chemicals can leave a person
feeling drained and shaken:

Bear in mind that if you panic:

panic does not cause any permanent harm

it does not drive people insane

panic attacks only last a short time, and then they subside, whether you stay in the
dreaded situation or not.

The basic reference work on which we have drawn is Fears, Phobias and
Rituals by Professor I M Marks, published by Oxford University Press (1987)